evil reputation for drunkenness and all sorts of misdeeds.

"Wilke, is that you?"

"Yes, Doctor, I'm Wilke."

The little town in which Frederick had practised was called Plassenberg
an der Heuscheuer, that is, Plassenberg by the Heuscheuer Mountains, a
range in the county of Glatz where excellent sandstone is quarried. The
people of the district loved Frederick both as a man and a physician. He
was the wonder-worker who had performed a number of splendid cures and he
was the human being, without pride of caste, whose heart beat warmly for
the good of the lowliest of his fellow-men. They loved his natural way
with them, always cordial, always outspoken, and sometimes harsh.

Wilke was bound for New England to join his brother.

"The people in the Heuscheuer," he said, "are mean and ungrateful."

Shy and distrustful at home, even toward Frederick, who had treated him
for his last knife wound on his neck, his manner here, with the other
passengers crossing the great waters, was frank and trustful. He was like
a well-behaved child chattering freely.

"You didn't get the thanks you deserved, either, Doctor von Kammacher,"
he said in his broad dialect, rich in vowel sounds, and recounted a
number of cases, of which Frederick had not known, in which good had been
repaid by evil tattle. "The people around Plassenberg are not fit for men
like you and me. Men like you and me belong in America, the land of
liberty."